Many organizations have processes which involve massive amounts of paperwork. Such processes include the reimbursement of medical claims by an insurer, the maintaining of employment records, and the approving of expense vouchers.
Generally, this type of process utilizes machine printed information forms which are filled out by hand. While a variety of different forms may be utilized, most machine printed information forms of this type have a number of fields in common which ask a person to fill in, for example, his/her name, address, social security number, etc. Each such field contains a machine printed field identifier (e.g., the words "name", "date", "social security number") and one or more spaces or boxes where a person fills in the requested information by hand.
The information which is written into the forms is then entered into a database which is stored in a computer memory. Typically, information on the forms is read by keypunch operators and mechanically entered into the computer. This method of data entry is costly because it is labor intensive and because there is a relatively large number of data entry errors.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and system for processing large numbers of machine printed forms to automatically enter handwritten information into a computer database and to eliminate the manual data entry step.